GOVERNMENT OF BENGAL

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24530, 2 April 1945, Page 3

GOVERNMENT OF BENGAL

♦ ACTION BY MR CASEY

DIRECT CONTROL OF PROVINCE

(Rec. 10.50 p.m.) BOMBAY, March 30. The Governor of Bengal (Mr R. G. Casey), under section 93. of the Government of- India Act, 1935, has assumed! direct administration of Bengal Province. Reuter’s correspondent says that this section empowers the Governor of the province, when he is satisfied that a situation has arisen in which a Government province cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of the act, to assume by proclamation .all 'pr any power vested in the provincial body. : “Mr Casey’s action follows the defeat of the Moslem League Government on the agricultural section of the Budget grant three days before the end of the financial year,” says the -Australian Associated Press special correspondent. '“The whole Budget demand, was rejected and the House was without supply. The Chief Minister (Sir Kwaja Nszimuddin) claimed that the defeat was a snap decision, and on the following day offered to test the confidence of the House on the remaining Budget items, but the Speaker of the Assembly refused to temporise and scored a political point by ruling that the Ministry could no longer function in the House, and adjourned the Assembly sine die. . . “Mr Casey took the view that a breakdown in government of the province had occurred, and took action for .which there .is constitutional sanction, but no exact precedent in modern provincial history.* “The recent history of Bengal politics has included many unedifying chapters. Twice Mr Casey had left the Chamber as. a protest against the House’s lack of dignity, and once, when it threatened to become a bear garden he prorogued the Assembly. The Government’s final humiliation came when a group of 20 or 30 so-called supporters who have changed sides without explanation several times in the last year deserted on the- Budget issue. This defection is generally attributed to the influence of a section of the cloth dealing community, which bitterly_resented the action of Mr Casey’s Government officials in making a large-scale round up of hoarded cloth which was supplying the black market at the expense of the ill-clad Bengalis.